Behavior analysts frequently use the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) to assess the language and social skills of children with autism in everyday practice and in research. Despite the widespread use of the VB-MAPP, its psychometric characteristics have not been extensively investigated. To provide information…

Background: Pragmatic communication difficulties encompass many distinct behaviours, including the use of vague and/or insufficient language, a common characteristic following traumatic brain injury (TBI) that negatively impacts psychosocial outcomes. Existing assessments evaluate pragmatic communication broadly, often with only one or two items…

Purpose: A rich body of evidence has illuminated the importance of caregivers' use of prosody in facilitating young children's language development. Although caregiver-child shared reading has been repeatedly linked to children's language skills, caregiver prosody during shared reading interactions (i.e., oral reading expressiveness) has been…

This study explores ChatGPT affordances, students' use of prompts, and their perceptions of using the tool in EFL writing. With screen capture technology to observe students' interactions with ChatGPT during writing process and semi-structured interviews, the data were analysed using a collaborative reflective thematic analysis. The results…

A strong predictor of children's language is performance on non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. However, the basis of this relationship remains unknown. Some suggest that NWR tasks measure phonological working memory, which then affects language growth. Others argue that children's knowledge of language/language experience affects NWR performance. A…

Dialogic reading (DR) is an evidence-based interactive shared reading intervention. This systematic review investigated the effect of DR interventions on the communicative initiations and responses of children with autism, an area of great difficulty for most individuals with autism. More precisely, the paper aimed to (a) describe the…

Native language (L1) attrition is ubiquitous in modern globalized society, but its cognitive/psycholinguistic mechanisms are poorly understood. We investigated lexico-semantic L1 attrition in L1 Russian immigrants in Israel, who predominantly use their second language (L2), Hebrew, in daily life. We included Russian monolinguals as a control…

In today's globalised and networked life ecologies, the language socialisation and literacy experiences of children around the globe are increasingly multilingual. Children encounter new languages early on in kindergarten and school and many children speak home languages other than the community language. Science and education have a joint…

Despite communicative goals in English language instruction, speaking skills remain underemphasized in Kazakhstani secondary schools where assessment policies prioritize grammar and reading proficiency. This study examined how four experienced EFL teachers conceptualized and implemented speaking instruction within an exam-oriented educational…

This state-of-the-art paper reviews studies employing role-playing as an instructional technique in English as a Foreign Language and English as a Second Language contexts. Through a systematic review of 32 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000-2023, the paper highlights the potential of role-playing to facilitate experiential learning and…

Social interaction depends on turn-taking and adapting to one's conversational partner, yet little is known about the typical and atypical development of these abilities. We investigated this in a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous speech in 64 parent-child dyads: 32 typically developing children (20.27 months at start, six girls, 24 White) and 32…

Many definitions and models of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) have emerged over the years, predominantly influenced by Euro-American perspectives. To explore this concept within diverse cultural contexts, this study delves into ICC in the Chinese setting using a qualitative approach. Byram's ICC model served as the theoretical…

This paper explores the application and efficacy of task-based teaching (TBT) methods within the context of internet-based distance learning for English, with a particular focus on integrating environmental education. Through an empirical study involving two groups of college students, the authors examine how TBT can enhance students' language…

This study investigated developmental pathways between early language and later social skills in a large, prospective cohort consisting of 3387 mother-child dyads. Mediational pathways were examined between parent-reported expressive language (at 2 years of age) and social skills (at 8 years of age), via core language and pragmatic language (at 5…

This empirical study examined error performance in Hausa vowel production by Yoru`ba´ speakers, using a quantitative approach. The aim was to compare two groups in the final-year National Certificate in Education in producing Hausa shared and unshared vowels, and to assess gender and institutional differences across five colleges (ABK, ACE, IKR,…